WE’RE GOING TO SREMSKI KARLOVCI BECAUSE OF BRANKO She is no more, that was a sound... The 200 th anniversary of the birth of great Serbian romantic Branko Radičević presents a rare and privileged opportunity to get acquainted with the cult of a young man who left this world so early
B ranko Radičević is one of the greatest Serbian poets of the period of romanticism. Born in Slavonski Brod on 28th March 1824, according to the Gre- gorian calendar, or 15th March, ac- cording to the Julian calendar, it was in Zemun that he completed five grades of, initially, Serbian prima- ry school, and, subsequently, Ger- man primary school, before enroll- ing at the Karlovci Gymnasium high school in the town of Sremski Kar- lovci. He continued his studies in Timisoara and Vienna. He opted to study law, only to drop out when discovering that he was suffering from tuberculosis, which prompted him to enrol in medical studies. He didn’t manage to either complete those studies or find a cure for the disease that ultimately took his life. Apart from his important literary works, such as When I Thought of Dying or The Parting of Schoolfriends, as well as many others that remain required read- ing in Serbian schools to this day, Radičević was also interesting to the public due to his romantic na- ture. He spent his youth in Karlovci, where he met the daughter of a Ser- bian great. That beauty was called Mina and she was the seventh child of Vuk Stefanović-Karadžić. With talent for music, painting and literature, and afforded plenty
Pesma „Pevam danju, pevam noću“ dobro je poznata i onima koji ne čitaju poeziju jer je taj tekst otpevao i u hit pretvorio Zdravko Čolić The poem Pevam danju, pevam noću is well known even to those who don’t read poetry, because those verses were also sung and turned into a hit song by Zdravko Čolić
of attention, she endeavoured to gain the best possible education. The attraction between her and Branko was mutual, best testifying to which are perhaps the idealised portraits of Branko that whisper from Mina’s paintbrush of a love that never un- furled its wings. This poet stood out in her eyes among a group of great contemporaries. Many of his poems were dedicated to Mina, but the po- et never admitted his feelings open- ly, considering himself unworthy of her hand, given that the Karadžić family was rich and enjoyed enor- mous repute. “Exuberance, a mild, childish exuberance, was the chief char- acteristic of Branko’s nature,” she
wrote in her famous text Memories of Branko. After he fell ill with tu- berculosis, it was actually her moth- er, the wife of Vuk Karadžić, who cared for him in his hospital bed and remained at his bedside until the end. Branko retained his thirst for life and the passions about which he wrote, dying very young, on 1st July 1853, in Vienna, aged just 29. He left behind more than 50 lyr- ic poems, seven epic poems and a large number of correspondences.
Tekst / Words: Vanja Filipović
Kako god bila posmatrana istorija našega pesništva, uvek e se u njenoj osnovi ukazati Brankov kamen temeljac (Mihiz) Regardless of how the history of our poetry is observed, Branko’s cornerstone will always appear in its foundations (Mihiz)
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